Some Election Notes 103 days before the Election

In 2005 there were 8 candidates for Mayor and 39 candidates for our 8 Council positions. 42 individuals and companies each gave between $500 and $5000 to the winning candidates and funded nearly 90% of all the money spent for their election in the 2005 campaign: 42 out of over 60,000.
Over half of the money spent by the winning candidates came from only 12 donors! Twelve out of 60,000+ !!! There are very few grass roots in Nanaimo politics which is dominated by corporate/company and union donations.

In 2008 there were only 4 candidates for mayor and 26 for Council. Mayoral candidates spent between $54 and $34,316 expending between 13 cents and $4.78 per vote received. Candidates for Council spent a total of $86,475 ranging from zero to $12,475 each with an overall average expenditure of $0.72 per vote, and individual averages ranging from zero to $1.64 per vote. Again, only about 30% of eligible voters bothered to vote with the winners getting between 30 to 50% of these votes cast, i.e. about 10 to 15% of the eligible vote. No grass roots here either.

There were 6 candidates in the 2011 byelection for one position on Council. To date only 4 have declared their expenses which ran from $2,290 to $12,733. Only about 10% of registered electors bothered to vote and the winner got approximately 25% of those voting.In the 2011 general municipal election there are no declared candidates of whom I am aware. I an unclear as to whether this is because the incumbents consider that they have completed the work which they wanted to carry out as members of Council and do not need to perform further public service, whether they consider that their work has not been successful and wish to let new talent into the game, if they have not yet heard from their sponsors, or if they are considering their platforms in the light of the last three years and considering the changes in course which may be necessary. One would think that by this late date such decisions would be clear. This is an election, is it not, rather than musical chairs.

An examination of city finances over the period 2008-2010, though it isn’t entirely congruent with the period of our current Council, comes as close as we can come. A quick review of the City’s Financial Statements for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010 show the following:

Overall Revenues increased from $142,853,448 by 1%;

Taxes increased from $74,210,940 by 10%;

Expenditures fell from $137,608,591 by 10%; and

The Surplus rose from $5,244,857 by 289%.

Similarly in this same period, overall Staff salaries:

Increased by 46% for those making over $75,000;

Decrease by 7% for those making less than $75,000; and

Increased by 2% for our elected officials.

I grant that these figures need further interpretation and no doubt there are some tedious definitions of some of these terms. But, there are what is given in the Statements of Financial Information given by the City on their web site. See:

Read these documents and ponder your election strategy. Perhaps this time it needs to be something more than entering the voting booth (if you go to the election at all) and trying to remember some of the names shown on the ballot. You may also wish to contact the members of your current Council to ask them about their interpretations of these financial figures as well as for their assessment of their years in office.

And remember, none of the above takes into account the nearly $90,000.000 in new expenditures which Council has added in the last couple of months, i.e. the City Hall Annex, the Water Treatment Plant, and the Emergency Water connection to Harmac, all essentially insurance expenditures.

9 Comments

I don’t know about individual salaries. The figures are for that class of city salaries that are less than $75,000. My guess is that we shed a few of these “cheap” jobs. Or look at the increase in the above $75,000 group. We probably transitioned some of those cheap folks over the line.

There seems to be very few rules that govern how local government taxes and spends. For example, the original convention centre came up $20 million short of the original budgeted amount. Yet, without borrowing anymore money, nor passing any special spending bylaws, somehow or other city staff ‘found’ the extra money to pay for it. Under what guise was that money collected?
More recently, city staff spends $12 million on a new office, again, I don’t remember ever seeing a bylaw saying I was being taxed so this office could be built, but they were able to ‘find’ the money. They are also apparently able to award this contract to build a $12 million office without going to public tender.
I hope that efforts being made to introduce zero based budgeting and greater accountability in municipal affairs becomes a REAL campaign issue during the next provincial election.
Expecting any substantive changes to come from city clowncil would only be possible if one hasn’t been paying attention.

Notice in the original post among the figures given from the city’s Financial Reports, that 289% increase in the city’s surplus from 2008 to 2010. In fact this represents nearly $20 million dollars in each of 2009 and 2010. Now I don’t immediately have a definition of “Surplus” other than the common usage, but if this interpretation is correct, there is a vast source of funding available.

Here is a list of the life remaining in the present City Council. Use it well….

August 22…………………………….. Special Council Meeting – 4:30 p.m. City Hall Board Room (changed from a Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole Meeting)
August 29…………………………….. Special Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole – 3:00 p.m. City Hall Board Room
September 5 ………………………… LABOUR DAY
September 8 ………………………… Public Hearing (re-scheduled from September 1)
September 12 ………………………. Council Meeting
September 19 ………………………. Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole
September 26-30 ………………….. UBCM Conference
October 3 …………………………….. Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole
October 4 to 14 …………………….. Local Government Election Nomination Period
October 6 …………………………….. Public Hearing
October 10 …………………………… THANKSGIVING DAY
October 17 …………………………… Council Meeting
October 24 …………………………… Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole
October 31 …………………………… Council Meeting
November 3 …………………………. Public Hearing
November 7 …………………………. Finance/Policy Committee of the Whole
November 11 ……………………….. REMEMBRANCE DAY
November 14 ……………………….. Council Meeting
November 19 ……………………….. ELECTION DAY

Ron’s figures tell us that 2.5% of the electorate gave Ted Grieve a comfortable victory in the council byelection. This is illustrative of how people get elected to councils and school boards. Interest groups have an outsized voting power. In school board elections the primary interest group are teachers. Now while teachers by themselves are less than 1% of the voters they have a much larger group whose votes they influence – spouses, neighbors, friends, relatives, etc. (hey, Jim, who should I vote for school board?). Teacher unfriendly candidates accordingly have a hard time getting elected. With respect to council elections there are several highly influential interest groups – realtors, contractors, public employees particularly civic employees, party activists … These groups again influence the votes of their associates, relatives, friends. These influence group effects only diminish if the public becomes highly engaged in the election (like in the last Calgary mayoralty contest) but that rarely (never?) happens in Nanaimo municipal elections.

David….. who should you vote for for school board? None of the ones who threw away the millions and millions that had already been approved to upgrade our aging schools.
I wonder if the sleeping electorate will ever wake up to the harm that the special interest group (teachers) inflicted on our school system by rejecting a plan that had been years in the making?
People will almost always put self-interest ahead of group-interest every time. In Nanaimo if you can get 12% + of the available vote, you too can follow city staff where they wish to take you.